We love the soil because God’s spirit spoke and created the earth, and because he called it out of its uncultivated natural state so that it might be cultivated by the communal work of human beings. We love physical work – the work of muscle and hand – and we love the craftsman’s art, in which the spirit guides the hand. In the way spirit and hand work together and through each other, we see the mystery of community. God – the creative Spirit – has formed nature, and he has entrusted the earth to us, his sons and daughters, as an inheritance but also as a task: our garden must become his garden, and our work must further his kingdom.

- Eberhard Arnold

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). There is no other perfection, only that of love. So be aware of the things that thwart this love: property and worry! Wherever possessions are heaped up while elsewhere people go hungry and cold, there is no love. So gather no wealth for yourself. Do not worry. Worriers build life on wealth just as much as the wealthy. Look at the birds and flowers, and believe in the loving God, the Father who provides everything.

- Eberhard Arnold

The first Christian community in Jerusalem was more than a historical happening: rather, it was here that the Sermon on the Mount came to life.…Jesus prophesied a kingdom, a rule of God that will overturn every unjust condition in the present order of the world, and make it new. To acknowledge this and to live according to it – this is God’s command for the hour.

- Eberhard Arnold